you're the only song i want to hear
by ADreamingSongbird
Summary: He's too tall, he's too heavy, and god, metal sounds so much louder and yet so much emptier on the wooden floor than tiny feet ever did.


His steps are too heavy.

Bizarrely, that's the first thing he thinks as he reaches for the doorknob—his steps, coming up the familiar path to the door, standing on the front porch, are too heavy. They aren't really his, are they?

And his eyes, they're too high. He's not supposed to look _down_ at the windowsills, at the empty flowerboxes, full of dirt and the occasional little green weed. It's supposed to be that he has to brace himself and stand on the tips of his toes to see into them clearly. The tops of the windows are smudged and dirty because whenever they bother to clean, neither he nor Ed can reach up there. Well, _could_ reach up there. Neither of them cares— _cared_ —enough to get a ladder or stool to stand on.

He opens the door and steps inside. _Clank, clank._ It's too loud.

Closing the door behind him, he hesitantly walks forward, feeling the sense of _wrongness_ growing with every step he takes. He's too tall, he's too heavy, and god, metal sounds so much louder and yet so much emptier on the wooden floor than tiny feet ever did.

Honestly, he doesn't even know why he's here. He just, he... he had to get away from the Rockbells' house for a while, away from the bed where Ed lies, mercifully asleep after the installation of his ports for automail. Even though it's quiet now, Alphonse can still hear echoes of his muffled sobs, held in through gritted teeth as best as he could; the clenched fists and quiet tears almost hurt more than screams would have. And he hadn't wanted Al in the room, through all that—he hadn't wanted him to see him hurting.

Alphonse had stayed right outside the door, fretting, worrying, and regretting. Not crying, though. He can't do that. And then, when it was over, he'd fled, needing a silence that wasn't so still and oppressive, needing to be somewhere away from Winry's tears and Granny's silent pity and the rebukes she'd never voice.

So he went home.

It's both too loud and too quiet as he clanks his way up the stairs to his and Ed's bedroom, moving fast and giving Hohenheim's study a wide, wide berth. As he pauses in the doorway, looking at the beds, the little beds made for little bodies, little beds that he can't use, he feels himself fill with melancholy. That's the only way he can describe it. If he had a throat, he would say it's closing; if he had real eyes, he would say they're blurring. But he doesn't have any of that.

 _Clang!_

Suddenly he's looking at the bottom of the door, and his own armor feet, and everything is wildly disorienting because he is looking up at his own not-body but his head isn't where it's supposed to be at all; it's on the floor.

"O—oh," he stammers, realizing that his head—his helmet?—just hit the top of the door and fell off. Strange, that there was no explosion of pain. Strange, that he can't fit into his own room without ducking. Not so long ago, he had been worried about hitting his head on the _doorknob_.

After a bit of struggling and blindly feeling around, he manages to get his glove-hands on his helmet-head and lifts it back onto his shoulders. It settles into place, floating as it always does, as if pulled by a magnet and made to hover in just the right spot so that he doesn't _look_ empty and hollow. He tries his best not to think about the way he _is_ empty and hollow, and ducks his head to walk into the room.

(There, on the wall. That's a scuff mark from one of the many times he and Ed chased each other around in here, shrieking with laughter while Mom looked on, beaming, and the sun was so bright as it came in through the windows.)

(There, on his bed, the way he left it—his favorite sweater, the one Ed proudly got him one year for his birthday. It was the most comfortable to wear on drafty cold days. He remembers snuggling up with his brother while wearing it, the two of them sharing a blanket and watching the rain, or holding Mom's hand as she harvested the last of the vegetables from the garden.)

It feels way too awkward and too wrong, towering above his bed like this. Helpless, he drifts to the closet ( _clank, clank, clank_ ) and with a too-large hand pulls open the door. Inside are all the shirts and pants he can't use anymore. He almost laughs at how ridiculously small they are compared to him now. He almost cries about it, too. Almost.

As he turns away, wishing he could say his eyes are burning with tears, he catches sight (painfully clearly) of himself, in the mirror.

Tall. Broad-shouldered. Grey, grey, grey. Huge, scary, threatening. Almost angry, really, especially with the reddish glow behind his helmet's eyes (red, like the color of blood, the blood that had coated his hands and arms and chest as he'd cradled his brother, carried him to the Rockbells desperately to plead for them to save him). He tries not to think about the golden-brown eyes he _should_ have.

"It's—it's not me," he stammers, still shocked, barely able to comprehend that this _is_ him now. He has to live like this for... for as long as this armor lasts, or the blood seal inside does.

"It's not fair," he wails, shaking his head. It looks utterly ridiculous; he feels distressed and wants to shrink in on himself, but he's a giant suit of armor and it looks stupid when he shrinks against the wall, wanting so desperately to cry. Why can he feel the tears and almost hear them in his own voice, if they won't come?! "It's not fair!" Why can't armor look sad? Why can't it cry?!

He reaches out with one of those big leather hands, empty like the rest of his "body", and tries to gently touch the mirror, to meet his reflection's fingertips in a strange parody of a moment of solidarity. But he misjudges the force behind his arm and with a sickening _crunch_ the mirror cracks, a thin, dark line jaggedly running out from under his fingers.

Mom put that mirror up, he remembers, staring at the crack with shock. Mom did, while he watched with wide, curious eyes as Ed poked through the box of nails. It was the day they'd been decorating the bedroom, putting pictures on the walls and painting some of the furniture. Mom put that mirror up on the wall, saying _there, now you two angels don't have to come in my room to see your adorable faces_ and laughing as she ruffled their hair.

" _I hate this!_ " he screams. His voice is so metallic and empty and _he's_ metallic and empty and he hates this body and he hates the crack in the mirror and—

 _Crash!_

He stands there, motionless, feeling like he should be gasping for breath, chest heaving, as he unclenches his fist and looks down at the shattered pieces of glass on the floor. Who knows how much strength there is in this arm, anyway? Certainly more than enough to smash mirrors.

 _I shouldn't have done that. If Brother comes in here, he might step on it, or try to pick it up, and get hurt. I shouldn't have done that. I'm sorry._ He doesn't know who his thoughts are apologizing to.

He bends down and starts picking up each shard. They're jagged and sharp, but he doesn't care, not even when one of them slices through the leather glove he calls his hand. He doesn't even notice it, actually, not until he thinks his fingers aren't responding as well as they should be and looks and finds a slit almost all the way across his palm.

"Oh," he says. Then he resumes picking up glass, not caring. It doesn't hurt, so why should he care? He doesn't care. He's fine. He _is_.

He picks up one of the bigger shards, but he misjudges his strength again and grasps it too tight, and it cracks in his hand, falling to the floor in five pieces. He stares at it for a moment and feels the urge to scream again. Instead, he just picks them up again, more carefully.

It occurs to him after a minute that perhaps his back should be hurting from bending over for this long. He almost laughs again. In all his ten years, he never thought he would be _wishing_ for his back to hurt, for his hands to bleed, for tears to bubble up his throat and clog his vision and drip out and be annoying and hot and humiliating.

He dumps the glass he's gathered into the wastebin near the door and buries his face in his hands, as if he could cry. He doesn't know what else to _do_ , because he feels so much like crying, standing here like this. But the tears don't come and nothing happens and it doesn't help; he just gets a closer look at the gash across his hand. He doesn't want to look at that, so he drops his hands and slowly clanks to the nightstand by the bed. There's a framed photograph there, of the three of them smiling. Granny had taken it, he remembers; it was when the Elrics and Rockbells had gone on a picnic down by the stream at the bottom of the hill. Winry was behind her, chasing Den, when the picture was taken.

He's afraid to touch it now. His touch is cold and unfeeling and wrong and not him. His touch breaks things.

(He remembers picking out the frame with Mom, remembers bickering with Brother about whether to buy the golden frame or the silver one. He remembers both of them being happy with Mom's choice, this silver one with gold details—she picked it because she thought they would both like it, and they liked it because she picked it. It had gone in the shopping basket and they'd happily walked home that afternoon in the warm sunshine, under the big, blue sky.)

(The sky doesn't feel as blue anymore.)

"I want—I want to go home," he tells the picture. And it's true, so very true. He isn't home, not anymore. Not like this.

 _I want Mom back,_ he almost adds, but doesn't, the words sticking in his not-throat as the image of a twisted, awful grin, of broken, wrong limbs, of reaching— _reaching_ for Brother, of horror and decay and nightmares, flashes behind his not-eyes. Mom is _gone_ and wanting her back is _wrong_ and he _can't_ do that anymore. He can't.

He pulls away from the picture and looks around the room.

"I shouldn't have come here," he says, even as he catches sight of Ed's bed, even as he finds himself drawn towards it like he always has been when upset and sorrowful or hurt or anything. Big Brother has always meant comfort and safety and a promise that things will be okay.

(Things won't be okay.)

A few months ago, there was a terrible thunderstorm. Al wasn't afraid of thunder, but he _was_ afraid of the possibility of tornadoes, after reading about them in one of the numerous books lying about, and the darkness late at night only compounded that worry. He had crawled into Ed's bed, wide-eyed and pale-faced, and studiously denied that he was scared, insisting that he was just _cold_ and Brother was warm. Ed had laughed and clearly not bought it, but he'd also made room and draped an arm over Al, and he swears that just before he fell asleep he heard his big brother say _I'll always keep you safe, so stop your worrying_ , heard him humming a lullaby that Mom used to sing, years and years ago.

Alphonse nearly sits down on Ed's bed, but stops himself. He's too big now, and he's afraid, afraid of the strength in this body, in these hands. He doesn't want to break it. He lets himself collapse on the floor next to it instead, in a loud clamor of clanging metal pieces, and bows his head until it rests against the blankets.

It should be soft. It should be soft and fuzzy and it should smell ever so slightly of Brother. It doesn't, and it's too foreign and strange now that he doesn't feel any of this to be comforting like Big Brother's bed has always been. After a few seconds more of denial, of begging _please, please, please, let me feel again_ , he jerks away, unsteady, unable to bear it any longer.

"I shouldn't have come here," he says aloud. How did Mom's lullaby go again? For a horrible, panicked second, he thinks he forgot it, but then he starts to recall, vague strains of a melody that both soothes him and makes him even sadder.

But he doesn't leave, curling up on himself on the floor and burying his face in Ed's blanket again, not moving for several hours. When he finally does lift his head, it's dark.

Winry and Granny are probably wondering where he's gone. Ed, too, if he's awake, and that's the thought that spurs him to his feet, the thought of Ed needing him and him not being there. He clambers unsteadily back upright and looks around again, yearning with a wistfulness so poignant that it's painful, yearning just to be able to _feel_ again, to run his finger through the gathering dust on the table or to curl up in Ed's bed and pretend it'll be okay.

He turns his back on the room and remembers to duck before he goes through the door. Somehow, having to do that hurts far more than hitting his head. As he goes to the stairs to go outside, he stops, looking for a long, heartwrenching moment at Mom's closed door. But he isn't allowed to miss Mom anymore, not after what they did.

Before he leaves his house, he softly sings Mom's lullaby as he cleans the dust and smudges and grime from the tops of the windows.

Winry is waiting when he gets back to the Rockbell home, clanking his slow way up the path. She's glumly sitting out on the steps, her eyes downcast, but as soon as she catches sight of him she leaps to her feet and cries "Al!"

"Hi, Winry," he says, trying to force cheer into his voice. If he can't cry, he can't make anyone else cry about his sadness either, right? "Sorry I'm getting back so late, I didn't realize the time..."

"That's alright," she says with a weak smile. "Granny said you probably needed to clear your head. Are you okay?"

"Mm," he nods, not sure if he's unwilling to say more or if he just doesn't trust himself to keep up the lie. Or maybe he's too ashamed to say more than one syllable when he's being so dishonest to his best friend. He changes the subject quickly. "How's Brother doing?"

She glances over her shoulder, back at the house. "He's... well, he's doing as well as anyone does, the first night after the surgery." Pressing her lips together, she drops her gaze for a second. "He's hurting a lot. He was asking for you, earlier, but I didn't know where you were, and Granny needed me to stay and look after him, so I couldn't go looking."

Al internally winces, berating himself for not being here when his brother needed him. "Oh," he says. "I'll go to him now," and he starts up the steps past her.

"No, don't—Al, wait," Winry catches his arm, and he stops. "He's sleeping now. It took forever for us to get him to take his medicine too, so... we can go inside, if you want, but we have to be quiet, okay? He needs his rest."

"Yeah," Al says, shrinking away from her. "Sorry." _Stupid armor, stupid loud armor, stupid heavy loud metal armor!_

"Al..." Winry frowns. He's not looking at her, staring at the grass poking through the steps instead, and it takes him a minute to realize she's looking at his glove-hand, the sliced one. "What happened here? Why didn't you say you got hurt earlier?!"

"It—it doesn't hurt," he says immediately, lamely, trying to alleviate her worry. She shouldn't worry about him. He doesn't hurt. He's fine. (Maybe if he keeps telling everyone that, he'll convince himself, too, eventually.) "I can't feel it. I can't feel any of it."

She stares up at him for a long moment, gears of thought obviously turning behind her concerned blue eyes, but finally takes his hand. "Well, come on inside," she finally says. "I'll sew it up for you, okay?"

"Okay." He wishes he could smile at her now. It would be a small, sad smile, and he instinctively feels like he's doing it, but he knows there's no change on the outside of his helmet-head. It still looks angry and awful, like it did in the mirror. But he doesn't want to think about the mirror. He looks at Winry instead as she smiles up at him, a small and sad smile, and he lets her gently guide him into the house.

They sit in silence as she works, deftly weaving the needle in and out with nimble mechanic's fingers. By the time she's finished, a row of neat stitches across his glove-hand, Granny has come downstairs. She doesn't say anything, just raising her eyebrows as she takes in Winry and her current task, and Al pretends not to have noticed her. He doesn't want to explain that he did this when he broke the mirror in his room. Or, his old room. He doesn't think he needs a bedroom, not anymore.

Once Winry ties off the thread, though, Granny speaks up. "He's asking for you again," she says with no preamble. "Go on up and let him know you're okay."

Al doesn't need to be told twice. He stands, murmurs a thank-you to Winry, and clunks his way up the stairs to the room where his big brother is. Immediately, when he opens the door, Ed's weak, pain-filled voice calls, "Al?"

"I'm here, Brother," he says softly, closing it again behind him. The room is dark, barely illuminated by the moonlight peeping in from the window. "I'm sorry if you were worried about me."

He wishes, oh, _god_ , how he wishes he could feel, could touch, could lean over and slide his arms around Ed's neck and lay his cheek against his brother's, could kiss his forehead and say _it'll be okay, I'll kiss it better,_ the same way Mom used to. But he can't. He can't touch—his hands, his hands only break things. He can't touch Ed, not now, not ever.

He retreats to the far wall, sitting down and making himself as small as he can.

"Where... where were you? Earlier, you weren't here..." Edward rasps.

"I took a walk," Al tells him quietly. "You should sleep, Brother. It's late."

"Don't wanna," Ed says. "I've, I've been sleeping all day."

"That's okay," Al replies. "You need rest. You'll recover faster that way." _And you need to recover. I need you to be okay, Brother! I need you._ He doesn't say that out loud, though. Brother obviously already knows it, and he doesn't want to give him anything to start a conversation with. Brother always tries to start conversations when he doesn't want to sleep.

"Don't wanna," Ed says again, obstinate as always. "Al..."

His left hand is reaching out in the darkness, towards Al where he sits against the wall. Alphonse doesn't move, petrified, not trusting himself to be gentle like he wants to, if he were to reach back. He's terrified of hurting his brother even more than he's already hurt; he turns away. _These hands only break things._

Edward pulls his hand back and tucks it to his side.

"I'm... I'm sorry," he says roughly. "Fine. I'll go to sleep. G'night, Al."

"Good night, Brother."

He doesn't say anything after that. Al doesn't know how to comfort him, not now, not like this, when he can't touch him, but it hurts to know that Ed is hurting and Al's rejection probably is hurting him more. He _knows_ Ed isn't sleeping now, either; he's lying there and _hurting_ and Al has no idea what he ought to do about that. But after a moment, he realizes there's one thing he can do. He remembers all of the tune and most of the words to Mom's lullaby. It's a funny role reversal, he thinks, but he's not laughing.

The moonlight is sparse, silvery-pale against the bedsheets and the wooden floor. Everything is still, except for the pain, which flows around them like blood and tears; he can almost feel it eddying and swirling around the room miserably. And sitting there, alone in the quiet, sad darkness with his quiet, sad brother, Alphonse begins to sing.

* * *

 _AN: I wrote this while listening to three songs: Trisha's Lullaby and Happiness (aka the Requiem for the Blind Alchemist) from the FMAB soundtrack, and "Our Children Taken" from the Zelda: Twilight Princess soundtrack. Please go listen to any of these three and cry about Alphonse with me. Also, the title comes from the song "Soul Meets Body" by Death Cab For Cutie. It's a great song to cry about Al to._

 _Also, the fact that Ed's lying there thinking Al hates him now is a fact that hurts me._


End file.
